The Way of Martha and the Way of MaryGraham, Stephen
Religion
The Way of Martha and the Way of Mary
Graham, Stephen
National characteristics, Russian; Russia -- Religion
Through Libava pass the greater number of those who are going to
America. Every ten days the Russo-Asiatsky Lloyd embarks a thousand or
two thousand emigrants, every week vessels sail for London and Hull
carrying Russians who have booked by the Cunard and the White Star and
other lines. From Russia there pass over to America more colonists than
from any other country in the world—upwards of 275,000 people every
year. A great number of these are Jews and Poles and Lithuanians. For
many years the number of actual Russians had been few; but in 1913 there
were of Russians alone more than of any other nationality in the world.
They are richer Russians these. They have money to show to the
inspectors at Ellis Island; they have trunks full of clothes. They could
not carry their burdens on their shoulders; they have come to the port
in trains. They are not melancholy and dusty and bearded like the
tramps, but bright-eyed, well dressed, so as to pass muster at the
inspection. They are making a bold bid for new life; they have had the
courage to pay for the new life with all the old; to take a jump in the
dark, and trust God. They do not belong eternally to the road; and they
are not carrying the cross on their backs, as are those melancholy
tramps of Siberia.
The Siberian emigrants stop at many factories and mines and do a few
days’ work, and are perchance shot down like dogs, at a place like the
Lena gold-washings, or they settle in a fever-stricken swamp and are
swept away by pestilence. But for the most part they come to no harm,
dying eventually of old age, full of memories, poverty-stricken all
their lives, and yet in a spiritual sense rich, confessing always that
they were strangers, seeking something better than that they were
leaving behind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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